In February 1972, the American president Richard Nixon went to China to meet Mao Zedong. In the context of the war in Vietnam and the cold war, this encounter marked a turning point in Chinese‑American relations. John Adams, a major musical figure of the last forty years, made this event of contemporary history the subject of his first opera. Nixon in China tackles the political thaw instigated by ping-pong diplomacy, begun by the invitation of the American table tennis players by their Chinese counterparts, one year before the presidential visit. A mesmerising work in which the pulsations and repetitions typical of minimalism are combined with melodic lines of great lyricism. For its entry into the Paris Opera repertoire, this work has been entrusted to the director Valentina Carrasco, who underlines the importance and the mediating power of Chinese national sport in history.
Thomas Hampson
as Richard Nixon
Renée Fleming
as Pat Nixon
Xiaomeng Zhang
as Chou En-Lai
John Matthew Myers
as Mao Zedong
Joshua Bloom
as Henry Kissinger
Kathleen Kim
as Chiang Ch’ing
Orchestre de l’Opéra National de Paris
as Self - Orchestra
Gustavo Dudamel
as Self - Conductor
